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Book Review.
Jan. 21st, 2005 09:22 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mrsbrownI re- read Saving Francesca tonight. I like the style of that book, the chatty, day to day happenings of it and the way they add up to a journey.
I've only come across that -style in young adult novels and the heroine, who I always like, is almost always 17.
In Saving Francesca, I'm also interested in Mia, Francesca's mother, who runs everybody's life and has an exciting career until she goes to bed and stays there for 3 months due to depression. the book is abo about her, even though we really only see her true self through the memories and angsting of her daughter.
After reading it I was thinking (I thought the same thing last time l read it) about the lack of similar novels in a similar style about grown 'ups and their periods of self-development.
For instance, I thought about myself as a subject (Surprise. Surprise) about the 19 year old me with a baby and domestic bliss developing into the person who eventually told MTB to fuck off.
Of course the sequel shouldnt be written, because I haven't turned into the highly successful Mia of the novel I have just read, and I should have.
I've only come across that -style in young adult novels and the heroine, who I always like, is almost always 17.
In Saving Francesca, I'm also interested in Mia, Francesca's mother, who runs everybody's life and has an exciting career until she goes to bed and stays there for 3 months due to depression. the book is abo about her, even though we really only see her true self through the memories and angsting of her daughter.
After reading it I was thinking (I thought the same thing last time l read it) about the lack of similar novels in a similar style about grown 'ups and their periods of self-development.
For instance, I thought about myself as a subject (Surprise. Surprise) about the 19 year old me with a baby and domestic bliss developing into the person who eventually told MTB to fuck off.
Of course the sequel shouldnt be written, because I haven't turned into the highly successful Mia of the novel I have just read, and I should have.
no subject
Date: 2005-01-22 12:26 am (UTC)Okay.
Some would say you are highly successful.
no subject
Date: 2005-01-22 12:50 am (UTC)Thankyou anyway... I think.
It's more that I haven't achieved the stuff I thought I would, and I'm not sure I want to anymore and I think I also have a bit of a screwy definition of success.
Blame my mother, I think.
no subject
Date: 2005-01-22 01:11 am (UTC)I think it's your definition of success that's the problem. I think you and I had a similar definition once, but I've been lucky(!) enough to have had my definition well and truly shot down, ripped into pieces and ground into the dirt. And it was me that did it - I had to. Or I'd've just given up.
I think you should do likewise. And I also suspect that we both only were really aware of what life was like for our parents when we were older and they were at the successful end of their careers, and able to be smooth and happy about their earlier experiences and struggles. When they were in the thick of them, we were too little to understand.
But I could be wrong, your call.
no subject
Date: 2005-01-22 01:39 am (UTC)Although I was also not referring to my definition of success which includes academic success - published papers, talking at conferences, higher degrees. I just don't have time or real inclination to do them. I mean, I want them and I don't want them - all at the same time!